“…Rage against the dying of the light…”
Soaking wet, windswept and sandblasted. They best describe the state I was in while lining up this shot.
A hailstorm approached from the south at the beach near Den Helder in the Netherlands. It was a cold afternoon and in the middle of December, so I wasn’t too fussy about it harbouring any lightning when I set up my tripod in the shoreline. But in my effort to create a leading line up to the ‘explosion in the sky’, my mind wandered. Thinking of missing out on other great photo opportunities in the area, as it always would. But this was going to be different. Just this one shot would be enough.
It’s the clouds that supply these hailstorms that I’ve come to both appreciate and respect while coming out on the beach. They are rich in colour and character, but have a temper to go with it. One moment, it’s a slight drizzle and the next you’re found running for your life without overstating the sheer potential power of the skies. I awaited patiently and carefully for the arrival of the stormfront and the setting sun.
The technical difficulty was the ever changing light conditions as the clouds started to cover most of the sky above. And having no filters able to fit the bulbous front-element of the 14mm lens, I stood there wiping off the surf and spray. The immense dynamic range of even the D600 wasn’t going to be enough to capture every bit of detail and drama the scene had on offer, so without the ability to fit a graduated neutral density filter, I needed to bracket some exposures.
It felt like two were enough to capture the contrast between the brightest parts of the sky and darkest parts of the foreground. The brighter one focused on the foreground and the other right before the infinity mark on the sky and horizon. Knowing this I was technically ready, but already shuddering due to the high winds and water that kept pouring in my rain boots.
After the sun set, the sky was instantly set ablaze. Bright reds and magenta reflections would make a stunning scene to be sure, but timing the washing shoreline to line up exacly how I wanted was the hardest part in the making of this shot.
For processing, I edited the two images simultaneously in Lightroom to keep the colours and details even, then hand-blended them in Photoshop with the aid of luminosity masks. For more detail in the foreground and sky, I like to edit a copy of the blended image in Nik Silver Efex Pro. It’s a black and white conversion, but if you set the layer blending mode of the finished black and white conversion to ‘luminosity’, the colour from the underlying layer will shine through.
One thing I did not notice during the capture, is that one of the images produced in the series did contain an air to ground lightning strike… (Un)fortunately that happened earlier that afternoon, when the cloud was farther away and I was still poking around the tripod in the super conductive sea and busy deciding on the composition…
‘The Dying Daylight’ was captured at the North Sea Coast, Den Helder, the Netherlands with the Nikon D600 at 14mm.
1,6s | f/16 | ISO50
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The Dying Daylight
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